Fair trade is an organised social movement and market-based approach to empowering producers and promoting sustainability.

An alternative trade and business model, fair trade encourages enterprises, particularly the small community-based ventures, to observe socially and environmentally just practices and to act as an active agent in improving the quality of life of their community.

The Department of Trade of Industry - Regional Operations Development Group (DTI-RODG) and APFTI are delighted to announce their partnership to improve market opportunities for MSMEs. The MOA signing was made at the 2010 Annual Fair Trade Partners Conference, held last March 4, 2010 at the Golden Prince Hotel in Cebu City.

With the conference theme, "Fair Trade: One Vision, One Solution", DTI Undersecretary Merly Cruz and APFTI Executive Director Vicente Roaring made the partnership official through a ceremonial MOA signing in front of over 100 fair trade producers and advocates gathered from across the country, including several DTI representatives, notably from Regions 6 and 10.

There's an old saying that goes "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a life time."

At APFTI, we feel that teaching people to catch fish is the better strategy for poverty alleviation. However, today's world has changed since this old adage was first uttered - today's world is far more complicated.

In order to make a real impact on poverty alleviation, we must not only teach our fellow-countryfolk how to catch fish, we must also think of ways to care for our rivers, lakes and oceans. We should seek more means to enable our waters to nurture more fish for the sake of those we hope to teach how to fish.

“Fair Trade is the best thing that happened to us. We started out as a hodgepodge group of housewives, out-of-school youths and elderly rural folk turning cogon grass into paper with our hands. Today we have 150 regular workers and about 200 more working in their homes."Loreta Rafisura, President, Salay Handmade Paper Industries, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines